Immersive Experience Network Podcast

Eric Spring in 't Veld, the CEO and creative director of Mama Bazooka, is interviewed by Sarah Dodd (Co-Founder, Escape Room Industry Conference), one of the world's most renowned escape enthusiasts. In this interview, Eric will share his insights on escape room design, the journey of creating The Dome, and much more. Founded in 2013 by Eric Spring in 't Veld (CEO and Creative Director), Mama Bazo...

Gijs Geers, founder of DarkPark, is a pioneering force in the escape room industry. In an inspiring presentation, he unveils the secret ingredient behind DarkPark's unforgettable experiences, revealing for the first time how an invisible layer leaves a lasting impact on players. This talk was recorded at the Immersive Experience Network Summit in October 2024 and is supported by Arts Council Engla...

Take a deep dive with Jeroen van Hasselt (Co-Founder, Entered), into the trials and triumphs of producing a unique, 200-minute-long game experience such as Demise of the Gricers, that pushes the boundaries of conventional escape game design. Explore the intricacies of world-building, next-level player equipment, narrative & system design, player engagement and training your actors to deliver u...

Join Lukas Rancher (Crime Runners), Dan Wiseman (The Detective Society), Bob & Nikki Kimber (Hysteria Escape Rooms), and Andrew Preble (Escape My Room) as they explore the advantages of episodic storytelling and how each approaches it differently. The panel will discuss why they choose this format, how it fosters player engagement, and the unique challenges it presents from both creative and b...

Join Creative Director Ivan Carić and performer Emily Carding as they share the challenges and lessons from running a 24-hour interactive experience set in the eerie world of horror and weird fiction. Discover how they blended immersive theatre, deconstructed storytelling, puzzles, and hospitality within the atmospheric setting of a 17th-century historic house to create a truly unforgettable exper...

Adrian Hon (Game Designer and Author) is a prolific maker, writer and fan within the Immersive Entertainment space who has spent the past two years attending, assessing and discussing dozens of experiences around the world.  He will be sharing key trends that are resonating well with audiences within the sector, common pitfalls and traps that he has identified across immersive strands and are...

Jenny McNeil takes a deep dive into how to use food as a tool for conveying narrative and engaging the imagination. From understanding the key emotions that food and communal eating extract, to discussing how truly immersive food content can sit within larger scale experiences. Finally, we'll cover how food can be monetised within a customer or branded experience. This talk was recorded at the Imm...

Sami Hamid from Glitch Studios pulls back the curtain and reveals how wearable XR headsets can be implemented into live staged theatre performances, bringing virtual characters and set pieces to life alongside real actors.  This talk touches upon the technical implementation of AR, how it works with your AV setup, how real actors can act alongside virtual actors, and how to achieve all this w...

Andy Barnes (Director, Entourage), Mairi Nolan (Puzzle Game Designer), Tom Lionetti-Maguire (Founder of Little Lion Entertainment), Farouk Dean (Co-Founder of NEXUS and Cellar Door) and Mark Sarfo Kantanka (Co-Founder of NEXUS and Cellar Door) in an open Q&A session, for our panelists and the audience to wrestle with the problems associated with developing your creative idea into a sustainable...

Join Michael Badelt from INTYA Creative as he explores turning mistakes into a success: How a small immersive scare attraction went from "Okay“ to "Oh Wow!!“ Hear about the sometimes surprising learnings made through the iterations and how those were incorporated back into the show to create an experience that was not just entertaining but had a hidden meaning that was engaging audiences even afte...

Simon Brind discusses concepts of Agency and Alibi in the creation of Larp and their connections to creating meaningful experiences for participants.  In this talk he explores 'Agency' - the ability of an active participant in a story to make decisions that change the story in meaningful ways (and what that means for dramaturgy), 'Alibi' '- the idea that the participant experience can be desi...

In this talk, Megan Clifton (Head of Narrative, Boomtown Fair) will discuss her learnings in her three years holding the storyline, the challenges of managing a truly collaborative fictional world, and how the ground-up model of interactive storytelling continues to find its feet. Boomtown is the largest interactive theatre in the world, aiming to create an accessible, playable space where the aud...

Join Ollie Jones (Co-Founder of SWAMP) and James Seager (Creative Director of Les Enfants Terribles) to learn more about their journey from entertainment providers to established brand collaborators as they share how they made a meaningful transition, what they wish they had known in the early days and the benefits, opportunities and challenges of the brand engagement and immersive entertainment w...

In this session, Jessie Fu (Senior Manager of Strategy and Partnerships) highlights what Fever have learned about how new technologies are empowering immersive experience creators.  Jessi shares topline data on key components and considerations that have driven a show’s successes from conception to execution, and discusses how integrating commercial and technical strategies can reduce risk. J...

Les Seddon-Brown (CEO and producer of Rematch) takes us through the makings of this unique show and how they were able to engage a higher-than-average attendance by first time Immersive goers of all ages and members of the global majority and dive into how the show resonated with a broad and diverse cast, crew, audiences and communities alike. Rematch remagine the greatest stories in sport as live...

In this session, Laura Wilkinson and Ben Fredericks talk about the development process for incorporating accessibility in their immersive show "Choosing Children" from the outset of the creative process, the lessons learned, and where accessibility in immersive can go from here. Choosing Children was a dramatic and interactive live spectacle for an intimate audience, which aimed to be fully access...

Joe Strickland (Digital Producer, DaDaFest), Laura Wilkinson (Producer, Ben Fredericks [Collaborations]), Thomas Florence (Artistic Director, But Why? Theatre) and Ben Fredericks (Writer and Director, Ben Fredericks [Collaborations]) discuss how the immersive sector can avoid disabling those audiences in the all too familiar ways they have been disabled by other forms of art and entertainment.&nbs...

Join creators Katie Day, John Sear and Sudha Bhuchar as they unpack how their form-busting book was made, and the new challenges they encountered working with the printed form rather than live events. They’ll shine a light on development process structure, working with collaborators new to immersive, engaging target audiences as co-creators, and keeping to a tight budget. https://arainbowforamala....

Immersive Artist Darren Emerson shares the challenges and experiences of bringing the multi-award-winning VR experience ‘In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats’ to audiences in the UK and Internationally. This talk was recorded at the Immersive Experience Network Summit in October 2024 and is supported by Arts Council England and our industry partners Illusion Design & Construct, Mance Communications,...

Led by Richard (Technical and Artistic Director) and Erica Warp (Director of Neuroscience for Brainstorms), this talk investigates music, art, science and commercial realities to create viable immersive experiences at scale. Brainstorms is an immersive experience exploring the brain’s response to music and featuring the work of Pink Floyd and Imogen Heap, debuted at Frameless in London over 4 week...

CULTVR Lab has emerged as Europe’s first immersive cross-disciplinary space, focusing on digital arts, XR live performance, and fulldome cinema with Matt Wright (Artistic Director) and Janire Najera (Managing Director) at the helm. This session explores the complexities of producing and touring Shared Reality content that blends virtual and physical environments, through learnings from the show "A...

Join Coney's Tassos Stevens (director) and Matthew Hawn (commissioner), as they discuss "Evergreen," a sprawling three-month adventure inspired by Matthew's wife Molly's love of children's literature and the couple's 20th wedding anniversary. After captivating 40,000 people with "The Golden Key" in Autumn 2023, legendary theatre company Coney embarked on a unique challenge: crafting an intimate ex...

An in-depth dive with the creative and production teams from Bridge Command (Owen Kingston, Artistic Director and Tom Black, Executive Director), Illusion (Dan Hughes, Director), Entourage (Andy Barnes, Director) and Clockwork Dog (Sam Clear, Head of Production) who created Bridge Command, a unique and pioneering interactive experience that allows players to be the bridge crew of their own starshi...

The video of talk can be found on our YouTube channel - https://youtu.be/p2pUSzzAqWc Sophie Larsmon, a creative producer and director of live immersive experiences, presents data and diagramming tools to help create and structure immersive experiences. Talking about her previous work, particularly her collaborations with immersive experience production company Any One Thing, Sophie shares some ins...

View the video of this session at https://youtu.be/Hv0fV7NGTlw Explore the creative process behind “Peaky Blinders: The Rise” with Rebecca Brower (Production Design and Costume Design) and Tom Maller (Creative Director and Director). They reveal how they turned the series into an immersive theatre hit, focussing on richly detailed set and costume design, combined with an engaging yet accessible na...